Ptolemy Quotes

According to some, heroic deaths are admirable things. I've never been convinced by this argument, mainly because, no matter how cool, stylish, composed, unflappable, manly, or defiant you are, at the end of the day you're also dead. Which is a little too permanent for my liking.

A dozen more questions occurred to me. Not to mention twenty-two possible solutions to each one, sixteen resulting hypotheses and counter-theorems, eight abstract speculations, a quadrilateral equation, two axioms, and a limerick. That's raw intelligence for you.

I know that I am mortal by nature, and ephemeral; but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies I no longer touch the earth with my feet: I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia

Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the earth.

The mercenary finished his coffee in a single gulp, It must have been piping hot, too. Boy, he was tough.

A typical master. Right to the end, he didn’t give me a chance to get a word in edgeways. Which is a pity, because at that last moment I’d have liked to tell him what I thought of him. Mind you, since in that split second we were, to all intents and purposes, one and the same, I rather think he knew anyway.

He was a worried man (I'm stretching the term a bit here, I know. By now, in his mid to late teens, he might just about have passed for a man. When seen from behind. At a distance. On a very dark night).

That's how powerful you are, girl...You pretty, but pretty alone is not what people see. You the kinda pretty, the kinda beauty, that's like a mirror. Men and women see themselves in you, only now they so beautiful that they can't bear to see you go.

Burned and squashed to death in a silver vat of soup. There must be worst ways to go. But not many.

Reading list (1972 edition)[edit] 1. Homer – Iliad, Odyssey 2. The Old Testament 3. Aeschylus – Tragedies 4. Sophocles – Tragedies 5. Herodotus – Histories 6. Euripides – Tragedies 7. Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War 8. Hippocrates – Medical Writings 9. Aristophanes – Comedies 10. Plato – Dialogues 11. Aristotle – Works 12. Epicurus – Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus 13. Euclid – Elements 14. Archimedes – Works 15. Apollonius of Perga – Conic Sections 16. Cicero – Works 17. Lucretius – On the Nature of Things 18. Virgil – Works 19. Horace – Works 20. Livy – History of Rome 21. Ovid – Works 22. Plutarch – Parallel Lives; Moralia 23. Tacitus – Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania 24. Nicomachus of Gerasa – Introduction to Arithmetic 25. Epictetus – Discourses; Encheiridion 26. Ptolemy – Almagest 27. Lucian – Works 28. Marcus Aurelius – Meditations 29. Galen – On the Natural Faculties 30. The New Testament 31. Plotinus – The Enneads 32. St. Augustine – On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine 33. The Song of Roland 34. The Nibelungenlied 35. The Saga of Burnt Njál 36. St. Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologica 37. Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy 38. Geoffrey Chaucer – Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales 39. Leonardo da Vinci – Notebooks 40. Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy 41. Desiderius Erasmus – The Praise of Folly 42. Nicolaus Copernicus – On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres 43. Thomas More – Utopia 44. Martin Luther – Table Talk; Three Treatises 45. François Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantagruel 46. John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion 47. Michel de Montaigne – Essays 48. William Gilbert – On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies 49. Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote 50. Edmund Spenser – Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene 51. Francis Bacon – Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis 52. William Shakespeare – Poetry and Plays 53. Galileo Galilei – Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences 54. Johannes Kepler – Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World 55. William Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals 56. Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan 57. René Descartes – Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy 58. John Milton – Works 59. Molière – Comedies 60. Blaise Pascal – The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises 61. Christiaan Huygens – Treatise on Light 62. Benedict de Spinoza – Ethics 63. John Locke – Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education 64. Jean Baptiste Racine – Tragedies 65. Isaac Newton – Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics 66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology 67. Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe 68. Jonathan Swift – A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal 69. William Congreve – The Way of the World 70. George Berkeley – Principles of Human Knowledge 71. Alexander Pope – Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man 72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu – Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws 73. Voltaire – Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary 74. Henry Fielding – Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones 75. Samuel Johnson – The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets

Much has happened since last we met, Bartimaeus," he went on. "Do you remember how we parted?" "No." I did. "You set light to me, old friend. Struck a match and left me burning in a copse." The crow shifted uneasily beneath the cleaver."That's a gesture of endearment in some cultures. Some hug, some kiss, some set each other on fire in small patches of woodland...

Believe me, I know all about bottle acoustics. I spent much of the sixth century in an old sesame oil jar, corked with wax, bobbing about in the Red Sea. No one heard my hollers. In the end an old fisherman set me free, by which time I was desperate enough to grant him several wishes. I erupted in the form of a smoking giant, did a few lightning bolts, and bent to ask him his desire. Poor old boy had dropped dead of a heart attack. There should be a moral there, but for the life of me I can't see one.

Pardon me, Highness, a women waits whithout." "Whithout what?

You think so?" The boy looked down at his cross-legged form. He was sitting straight-backed, legs folded neatly in the manner of an Egyptian scribe. "It's two thousand, one hundred and twenty-nine years since Ptolemy died," he said. "He was fourteen. Eight world empires have risen up and fallen away since that day, and I still carry his face. Who do you think's the lucky one?

The older you get the more you live in the past

We born dyin'...But you ask a man an' he talk like he gonna live forevah.

Annabeth jogged towards us, giving me one of those annoyed expressions like, If you get yourself killed, I’m going to murder you.

We communicated with pithy, rather monosyllabic thoughts: viz. Run, Jump, Where? Left, Up, Duck, ect. (This latter was an observation I made on the edge of a lake. Nathaniel unfortunately took it as a command, which resulted in our temporary immersion.) We didn't ever quite say Ug, but it was a close-run thing.

I tried to look confused, which is one of my most convincing expressions.

The Hermit was known to be pretty sniffy about disciples who returned in failure. There was a wall of the institute layered with their skins- an ingenious display that encouraged vigor in his students, as well as nicely keeping out the drafts.

I kissed her, because 1) when you’re a demigod going into battle, every kiss might be your last, and 2) I like kissing her.

What was it that drew you back? My marvellous personality, I suppose? Or my sparkling conversation?

WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?’ Wadjet roared. ‘YOU DARE TAKE A SELFIE WITH THE COBRA GODDESS?

Charge!’ Sadie barrelled into the clearing, her staff in one hand and her Greek scroll in the other. I glanced at Annabeth. ‘Your new friend is awesome.’ Then I followed Sadie.

Mine is a khopesh ,’ Carter said. ‘The original Egyptian version. What you’re holding is a kopis – a Greek design adapted from the Egyptian original. It’s the kind of sword Ptolemy’s warriors would’ve used.’ I looked at Sadie. ‘Is he trying to confuse me?’ ‘No,’ she said brightly. ‘He’s confusing without trying.

Percy, explaining things to you is like lecturing a gerbil.

Ptolemy II’s far-famed parade, held in Alexandria perhaps in 278, included eighty thousand soldiers; even Adolf Hitler’s fiftieth birthday in 1939 was celebrated by only fifty thousand

listen, a goad's anything that provokes or incites an enemy --- let me have a go: cursed deamon! you have met your end! the shivering fire awaits you! i shall spread your vile essance across this hall like... um, like margarine, a very think layer of it... --- ye-es... im not sure he'll pick up on that analogy. never mind, keep going.

Fifty years isn’t too bad. With luck you might see it happen when you’re a sweet, old granny, dandling big fat babies on your knee. Actually”—he held up a hand, interrupting Kitty’s cry of protest—“no, that’s wrong. My projection is incorrect.” “Good.” “You’ll never be a sweet old granny. Let’s say, ‘sad, lonely old biddy’ instead.

Annabeth nodded. "That's right.Alexander conquered Egypt.After he died, his general Ptolemy took over. He wanted the Egyptians to accept him as their pharaoh, so he mashed the Egyptian gods and the Greek gods together and made up new ones." "Sounds messy," Sadie said. "I prefer my gods unmashed.

The great man say that life is pain," Coydog had said over eighty-five years before. "That mean if you love life, then you love the hurt come along wit' it. Now, if that ain't the blues, I don't know what is.

It was Nathaniel's boundless capacity for stating the obvious that made him so charmingly human.

To my astonishment I saw him standing at a table with Kitty Jones. It was the Kitty Jones bit that was astonishing. Not the table. Though it was very nicely polished.

She kissed me, and I decided that I was glad too. A kiss in the sunset and the promise of a good bacon cheeseburger – with that kind of payoff, who needs immortality?

Giant-chicken mode,’ I remembered. ‘Dude, my avatar is a falcon-headed warrior .’ ‘I still think you could get a sponsorship deal with KFC. Make some big bucks.

Her face had an imperious, timeless quality that I’d learned to recognize. It meant I’m a goddess; deal with it.

There are times in your life when things line up and Fate takes a hand in your future," Ptolemy remembered Coydog saying. "When that happens, you got to move quick and take advantage of the sitchiation or you'll never know what might have been." "How do I know when it's time to move quick?" L'il Pea asked. "When somethin' big happens and then somethin' else come up.

Listen,” I began, “this is an established, traditional form that—” “Traditional nothing. Where are your clothes?” “Clothes?” I said weakly. “I don’t normally bother with them in this guise.” “Well, you could put on a pair of shorts, at least. You’re not decent.” “I’m not sure they’d go with the wings….” The demon frowned, blinked. “Hold on, enough of this!” “Lederhosen would. They’d compliment the leather.

I’d have to play this smart … which was not my usual style.

Annabeth has my number,’ Sadie said. ‘Which, honestly, brother, is a much easier solution than writing invisible hieroglyphs on your friend’s hand. What were you thinking?

The Ptolemies were in fact Macedonian Greek, which makes Cleopatra approximately as Egyptian as Elizabeth Taylor.

I thought I told you to stop doing that," he snapped. A thin-lipped mouth opened; the jutting chin and nose knocked together indignantly. "Do what?" "Taking on such a hideous appearance. I've just had my breakfast." A section of brow lifted, allowing an eyeball to roll forward with a squelching sound.The face looked unapologetic."Sorry, mate," it said. "It's just my job." "Your job is to destroy anyone entering my study without authority. No more, no less." The door guard considered. "True. But I seek to preempt entry by scaring trespassers away. To my way of thinking, deterrence is more aesthetically satisfying than punishment." Mr. Mandrake snorted. "Trespassers apart, you'll likely frighten Ms. Piper here to death." The face shook from side to side, a process that caused the nose to wobble alarmingly. "Not so. When she comes alone, I moderate my features. I reserve the full horror for those I consider morally vicious." "But you just looked that way to me!" "The contradiction being...?

That’s how Ptolemy imagined the disposition of his memories, his thoughts: they were still his, still in the range of his thinking, but they were, many and most of them, locked on the other side a closed door that he’s lost the key for. So his memory became like secrets held away from his own mind. But these secrets were noisy things; they babbled and muttered behind the door, and so if he listened closely he might catch a snatch of something he once knew well.

My host needs a certain level of simplicity," the goddess continued. "Percy Jackson is perfect. He is powerful, yet his mind is not overly crowded with plans and ideas." "Wow," I said. "Really feeling the love here.

We have developed from the geocentric cosmologies of Ptolemy and his forebears, through the heliocentric cosmology of Copernicus and Galileo, to the modern picture in which the earth is a medium-sized planet orbiting around an average star in the outer suburbs of an ordinary spiral galaxy, which is itself only one of about a million million galaxies in the observable universe.

Annabeth rubbed the clay beads on her necklace, the way she does when she’s thinking. She looked beautiful. But I digress.

That’s – that’s not fair,’ Sadie said, her voice trembling. ‘Tempting me with destruction.

For once you’re right, brother dear,’ Sadie said. ‘As much as I’d love to be a literal goddess, I suppose I’ll have to remain a figurative one.

Across the field, Carter’s voice yelled: ‘STAHP!’ I guess stahp is actually a word in Ancient Egyptian. Who knew?

To the punishing study of Egyptian, however, Cleopatra applied herself. She was allegedly the first and only Ptolemy to bother to learn the language of the 7 million people over whom she ruled.

There was a devotion to detail here that could only come with genuine affection, perhaps even with love.

I guess he, like, passed the test, so he threw away his notes.' Annabeth looked horrified. 'Are you crazy? You throw away your notes after a test?' 'Doesn't everybody, Miss Brainiac?

I mean … we’d just passed our one-year dating anniversary. I figured I was a sort of long-term investment for her. She hoped I would pay dividends eventually; if I died now, she would’ve put up with all my annoying qualities for nothing.

Also he stole my sword,’ I said. ‘I want it back.’ The three of them stared at me. ‘What?’ I said. ‘I like my sword.

I try to avoid teaming up with goddesses who eat roadkill. It's one of my personal boundaries.

Isn't it hard to maintain an argument when you can read each other's mind?

When you get old you begin to understand that no one talks unless someone listens, and no one knows nuthin' less somebody else can understand.

When I realized I was hovering at the centre of a giant glowing purple vulture, my first thought was: Carter will never stop teasing me about this.

One night I dreamed I was locked in my Father's watch With Ptolemy and twenty-one ruby stars Mounted on spheres and the Primum Mobile Coiled and gleaming to the end of space And the notched spheres eating each other's rinds To the last tooth of time, and the case closed.

Setne stopped chanting when he saw me. ‘Awesome!’ He grinned. ‘You brought the vulture with you. Thanks!’ Not the reaction I’d been hoping for. I keep waiting for the day when the bad guy sees me and screams, I give up! But it hasn’t happened yet.

Then again, I have Cyclopes and two-tailed mermen as siblings. I wasn’t about to comment on the Kane kids’ lack of resemblance.

Next to me, pressed against the wall of the old fort, Annabeth peered into the rain, waiting for magical teenagers to fall out of the sky.

Ridiculous!" The goddess sneered. "Your mind is too wily, girl-too stubborn and intelligent. I couldn't steer you as easily." "Steer me?" I protested. "Hey lady, I'm not a Toyota.

My mouth went dry. I imagined Annabeth invoking hieroglyphs at Camp Half-Blood, blowing up chariots on the racetrack, hurling giant blue fists during capture the flag. ‘So my girlfriend is a magician now, like, permanently? Because she was scary enough before.

Why is it so difficult for us to think in relative terms? Well, for the good reason that human nature loves absoluteness, and erroneously considers it as a state of higher knowledge.

Anyway,’ I said, ‘Setne tried to offer me immortality. He tried to get a handle on my motives for turning it down once before, but –’ ‘Pardon,’ Sadie interrupted. ‘Did you say you’ve turned down immortality before?

Setne’s dangerous,’ Annabeth said. ‘We can’t just go charging in. We need a plan.’ ‘She’s right,’ Carter said. ‘I kind of like charging in,’ I said. ‘Speed is of the essence, right?’ ‘Thank you,’ Sadie muttered. ‘Being smart is also of the essence,’ Annabeth said. ‘Exactly,’ Carter said. ‘We have to figure out how to attack.’ Sadie rolled her eyes at me. ‘Just as I feared. These two together … they’ll overthink us to death.’ I felt the same way, but Annabeth was getting that annoyed stormy look in her eyes and, since I date Annabeth, I figured I’d better suggest a compromise. ‘How about we plan while we walk?’ I said. ‘We can charge south, like, really slowly.

Now…I live and breathe weirdness. It goes with the territory when you’re a demigod. But there are still moments when I do a mental double take: like when I’m flying upward inside a giant glowing vulture, flapping my arms to control make-believe wings, holding an almost-immortal magician in my talons…all so I can steal his hat.

When our ideas on any subject, material, intellectual, or social, undergo a thorough change in consequence of new observations, I call that movement of the mind revolution. If the ideas are simply extended or modified, there is only progress. Thus the system of Ptolemy was a step in astronomical progress, that of Copernicus was a revolution.

As for Sadie, she didn’t appear interested in strategy. She leaped from puddle to puddle in her combat boots. She hummed to herself, twirled like a little kid and occasionally pulled random things out of her backpack: wax animal figurines, some string, a piece of chalk, a bright yellow bag of candy. She reminded me of someone … Then it occurred to me. She looked like a younger version of Annabeth, but her fidgeting and hyperness reminded me of … well, me. If Annabeth and I ever had a daughter, she might be a lot like Sadie. Whoa. It’s not like I’d never dreamed about kids before. I mean, you date someone for over a year, the idea is going to be in the back of your mind somewhere, right? But still – I’m barely seventeen. I’m not ready to think too seriously about stuff like that. Also, I’m a demigod. On a day-to-day basis, I’m busy just trying to stay alive. Yet, looking at Sadie, I could imagine that someday maybe I’d have a little girl who looked like Annabeth and acted like me – a cute little hellion of a demigod, stomping through puddles and flattening monsters with magic camels.

I wanted to get up and face Setne, but my rear end had other ideas. It wanted to stay where it was and be in extreme pain. Butts are like that sometimes. They can be, well, butts.

Well, with luck we'll miss the beginning of the performance.

Sure, I had other skills. I could make waves (literally) and occasionally even whip up a nice frothy hurricane. But my sword was a big part of who I was. Without it, I felt crippled.

Strong characters of their sort tend to gravitate together. Pride has a part to play in it, and other emotions too. Neither wishes to fail; each redoubles their effort to impress. Things get done - but not always the right things or not always the things expected. and there's not much you can do to stop it.

The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either CS [coordinate system] could be used with equal justification. The two sentences, “the Sun is at rest and the Earth moves,” or “the Sun moves and the Earth is at rest,” would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS.

I’d love to tell you that I walked in and killed the snakes, Annabeth stabbed Elvis in the back and took his scroll, and we went home happy. You’d figure once in a while things would work out the way we planned. But noooooo.

Mortal as I am,’ he wrote, ‘I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the Earth. . .

The object that was pinning me haplessly to the ground, like a butterfly on a collector's tray, was of twentieth-century origin and of very specific function. Oh, all right, it was a public lavatory.

We need a very potent hybrid attack, an abomination even Ptolemy would approve of.’ ‘Why are you looking at me?’ I asked. ‘I’m not abominable.’ ‘You are a son of Poseidon,’ the goddess noted. ‘That would be a most unexpected combination.’ ‘Combination? What –’ ‘Oh, no, no, no.’ Sadie raised her hands. She looked horrified, and anything that could scare that girl I did not want to know about.

I don’t think he’ll go that far.’ Carter rose to his feet and scanned the horizon. ‘Our headquarters are in Brooklyn. And I’m guessing Manhattan is like Greek god central? A long time ago, our Uncle Amos hinted at that.’ ‘Well, yeah,’ I said. ‘Mount Olympus hovers over the Empire State Building, so –’ ‘Mount Olympus –’ Sadie blinked – ‘hovers over the … Of course it does. Why not?

That didn't last long, of course. "Oh Bartimaeus, could you just irrigate the Fertile Cresent?""Could you just divert the Euphrates HERE and HERE?""Look, while you're at it, do you mind just planting a few million wheat seeds up and down the flood plain? Thanks." Didn't even give me a dibble. By the time I got to Ur I wasn't surging with any of that terrible joy, oh no. My back was KILLING me.

Trustin’ a woman is like walkin’ in California,” Coydog would say. “You know there’s bound to be a quake sometimes but you just keep on walkin’ anyways. What else could you do?

(Actually, I have been surrounded by fire-breathing death snakes before, but not ones with wings. Everything is worse when it has wings.)

Toodle-oo, demigods!

Nothing says 'Hi, neighbor!' like killing a guy's flying reptile.

jumping backward is hard when you’re holding a sword. It’s even harder when the ground is muddy. Long story short: I slipped and landed on my butt.

I’m getting a headache. Usually when I get a headache, it’s time to stop talking and attack something.

Looking at her was disorientating. The ‘Percy’ part of me saw my usual awesome girlfriend. The ‘Nekhbet’ part of me saw a young woman surrounded by a powerful ultraviolet aura – the mark of a Greek demigod. The sight filled me with disdain and fear. (For the record: I have my own healthy fear of Annabeth. She has kicked my butt on more than one occasion. But disdain? Not so much. That was all Nekhbet.)

Sadie, Carter, Annabeth and I exchanged uneasy looks. Normally when a god says, We must stop him , it means, You must stop him while I sit back and enjoy a cold beverage. But Nekhbet seemed serious about joining the gang.

Kitty shook her head. "You're wrong. Your apology isn't irrelevant and you're a fool if you can't see it. I'm grateful that you stopped Makepeace from having me killed. Now stop being such a wet blanket and try to think of something to do." He looked at her. "Hold on—was there a thanks buried in that pile of invective?

I wondered how Setne knew that. Maybe he could ‘smell’ a demigod’s aura the way Greek monsters could. Or maybe my prankster friends the Stoll brothers had written I’M A DEMIGOD on my forehead in permanent marker and Annabeth had decided not to tell me. That happened occasionally.

I’m not sure why Setne didn’t just magic himself away. I suppose even a powerful magician can succumb to panic. When you’re free-falling, you forget to think rationally: Gee, I have spells and stuff. Instead your animal brain takes over and you think: OH MY GOD THIS KID IS HOLDING ON TO ME AND I’M TRAPPED AND FALLING AND I’M GOING TO DIE!

But before the grandeur and intricacy of Nature, he was, like Ptolemy and Kepler, exhilarated as well as disarmingly modest. Just before his death he wrote: “I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy, playing on the seashore, and diverting myself, in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Carter wagged the Yankees cap at me. ‘Nekhbet wants Percy to be her host. That’s one way the Egyptian gods maintain a presence in the mortal world. They can inhabit mortals’ bodies.’ My stomach jackknifed. ‘You want her –’ I pointed at the frazzled old vulture goddess – ‘to inhabit me? That sounds …’ I tried to think of a word that would convey my complete disgust without offending the goddess. I failed.

Do you know how to mix our powers?’ I asked. Carter’s shoes squished in the mud. ‘Well … not exactly.’ ‘Oh, please,’ Sadie said. ‘That’s easy. Carter, give your wand to Percy.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Just do it, brother dear. Annabeth, do you remember when we fought Serapis?’ ‘Right!’ Annabeth’s eyes lit up. ‘I grabbed Sadie’s wand and it turned into a Celestial bronze dagger, just like my old one. It was able to destroy Serapis’s staff. Maybe we can create another Greek weapon from an Egyptian wand. Good idea, Sadie.’ ‘Cheers. You see, I don’t need to spend hours planning and researching to be brilliant. Now, Carter, if you please.

Cleopatra moreover came of age in a country that entertained a singular definition of women’s roles. Well before her and centuries before the arrival of the Ptolemies, Egyptian women enjoyed the right to make their own marriages. Over time their liberties had increased, to levels unprecedented in the ancient world. They inherited equally and held property independently. Married women did not submit to their husbands’ control. They enjoyed the right to divorce and to be supported after a divorce. Until the time an ex-wife’s dowry was returned, she was entitled to be lodged in the house of her choice. Her property remained hers; it was not to be squandered by a wastrel husband. The law sided with the wife and children if a husband acted against their interests. Romans marveled that in Egypt female children were not left to die; a Roman was obligated to raise only his first-born daughter. Egyptian women married later than did their neighbors as well, only about half of them by Cleopatra’s age. They loaned money and operated barges. They served as priests in the native temples. They initiated lawsuits and hired flute players. As wives, widows, or divorcées, they owned vineyards, wineries, papyrus marshes, ships, perfume businesses, milling equipment, slaves, homes, camels. As much as one third of Ptolemaic Egypt may have been in female hands.

Knock it off, you two.’ Annabeth handed her scroll to Sadie. ‘Carter, let’s trade. I’ll try your khopesh ; you try my Yankees cap.’ She tossed him the hat. ‘I’m usually more of a basketball guy, but …’ Carter put on the cap and disappeared. ‘Wow, okay. I’m invisible, aren’t I?’ Sadie applauded. ‘You’ve never looked better, brother dear.’ ‘Very funny.’ ‘If you can sneak up on Setne,’ Annabeth suggested, ‘you might be able to take him by surprise, get the crown away from him.’ ‘But you told us Setne saw right through your invisibility,’ Carter said. ‘That was me ,’ Annabeth said, ‘a Greek using a Greek magic item. For you, maybe it’ll work better – or differently, at least.’ ‘Carter, give it a shot,’ I said. ‘The only thing better than a giant chicken man is a giant invisible chicken man.

Ancient astrology was rather different from the modern horoscope. Its more learned practitioners enjoyed intellectual respectability, and there was a substantial overlap between astrology and philosophy. People would consult astrologers on anything, from the time and manner in which they were going to die to who was likely to win in the chariot-races that afternoon. The chronology of the origins and development of astrology are impossible to establish, and were debated even in the ancient world. Suffice it to say here that the Western tradition was one of many traditions: Indian, Chinese, Middle Eastern. It was Ptolemy, the Hellenistic geographer and astrologer, who first laid the technical foundations of Western astrology in his Tetrabiblos (‘Four Books’). But the rise in the prominence of astrology was closely tied to the Roman imperial regime. It greatly benefited emperors to have their sovereignty ‘written in the stars’.

From all this we concluded that the first two divisions of theoretical philosophy should rather be called guesswork than knowledge, theology because of its completely invisible and ungraspable nature, physics because of the unstable and unclear nature of the matter; hence there is no hope that philosophers will ever be agreed about them; and that only mathematics can provide sure and unshakable knowledge to its devotees, provided one approaches it rigorously. For its kind of proof proceeds by indisputable methods, namely arithmetic and geometry (tr. Toomer, p. 6).

Okay, where’s the camera icon?” Setne fumbled with his phone. “We have to get a picture together before I destroy you.” “Destroy me?” demanded the cobra goddess. She lashed out at Setne, but a sudden gust of rain and wind pushed her back. I was ten feet away from Annabeth. Riptide’s blade glowed as I dragged it through the mud. “Let’s see.” Setne tapped his phone. “Sorry, this is new to me. I’m from the Nineteenth Dynasty. Ah, okay. No. Darn it. Where did the screen go? Ah! Right! So what do modern folks call this…a snappie?” He leaned in toward the cobra goddess, held out his phone at arm’s length, and took a picture. “Got it!” “WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?” Wadjet roared. “YOU DARE TAKE A SELFIE WITH THE COBRA GODDESS?” “Selfie!” said the magician. “That’s right! Thanks. And now I’ll take your crown and consume your essence. Hope you don’t mind.